Kids Books: War Stories

GLEAM AND GLOW,by Eve Bunting, with illustrations by
Peter Sylvada. (Harcourt, $16; grades K-3.) Few children’s
writers have been more prolific than Bunting. By her publisher’s
account, she has written some 200 books. Never one to shy away from
challenging subjects, she’s tackled adult illiteracy,
homelessness, and illegal immigration, among other topics. She once
said that 90 percent of her ideas come from the news. That was
certainly the case with her 1994 book Smoky Night, set during
the Los Angeles riots. Although the book went on to win the prestigious
Caldecott award for its illustrator, David Diaz, it created something
of a stir with its matter-of-fact depictions of looting and arson.

Gleam and Glow, about a family forced from their home by war,
is also torn from the headlines. Told through the eyes of 8-year-old
Viktor, the narrative is set in an unnamed country. But as Bunting
explains in an author’s note, it was drawn from the real-life
experiences of a Bosnian family forced in the early 1990s to flee
advancing Serb forces.

The story begins with the father setting out on a bleak winter
morning to join the underground, which is fighting against those who
want to push the region’s inhabitants out of their country. With
the enemy moving closer and closer to their village, Viktor, his
mother, and his 5-year-old sister, Marina, know they will soon have to
abandon their home. Each day, strangers heading for the border stop by
the house with horrible stories of what they have seen. “When the
stories got too terrible,” Viktor relates, “Mama sent
Marina and me to the pond for fresh water or to the vegetable patch to
look for hidden potatoes. But we heard a lot anyway.”

One day, a man arrives with a heavy pack on his back and a large
bowl containing two golden fish in his arms. He can’t carry the
bowl any farther, so he gives it to Marina and tells her to feed the
fish until her family is forced to leave. Marina names the fish Gleam
and Glow and confides to her mother that she loves them “with all
her heart.” Three nights later, as the family prepares to flee
the next morning, Viktor takes the fish to the pond and slips them into
the cold, dark water.

The hostilities finally come to an end many months later. The family
members, who have been staying in a refugee camp, return to their
property and find it destroyed. Except for a few flowers, Viktor notes,
“we could have been on the moon.” But a miracle of sorts
awaits them in the pond, something that will remind them that all is
not lost. Bunting and Sylvada, illustrator of the acclaimed picture
book A Symphony of Whales, effectively convey the grim reality
of the family’s experience but manage to do so in a graceful and
restrained manner perfectly suited to the book’s young audience.
Sylvada’s oil paintings are nothing short of stunning, adding
both clarity and depth to Bunting’s fine narrative.

—Blake Hume Rodman

SHATTERED: Stories of Children and War,edited by Jennifer
Armstrong. (Knopf, $15.95; grades 7 and up.) According to
Armstrong’s introduction to this powerful collection, “Wars
are supposed to be the business of officers and soldiers, but
that’s not how it happens.” War affects everyone, not least
of all, children. This unique volume of 12 provocative stories by some
of the foremost voices in young adult and children’s literature
skillfully juxtaposes the innocence of childhood with the horror of
war, resulting in a book as beautiful and inspiring as it is
harrowing.

Most of these tales do not take place on battlegrounds, but the
effects of war are still painful. In the title story, by Marilyn
Singer, for example, the struggle of a Vietnam vet struggle to overcome
both the birth defects that stem from their father's exposure to Agent
Orange and his emotiona trauma, which seems to pervade their
family.

Even those stories set in actual war zones focus on emotion, not
politics or combat strategy. "Bad Day for Baseball," by Graham
Salisbury, describes the raid on Pearl Harbor through the eyes of a
Japanese American teenager living in Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, Masa
expects to get up and play baseball. Instead, as his father stares
toward the sky in disbelief, unable to fathom an attack by his former
homeland, Masa and other ROTC teens hunt Japanese paratroopers in the
mountains. And even as he tries to curb his fear of being shot by the
enemy. Masa encounters anti-Japanese feelings among his peers.

The characters in these stories are not soldiers in the strict sense
of the word, which conjures images of 20-something men in crisp
uniforms. They are children who have no understanding of politics or
religious divides and are trying simply to survive. But as tough as
these stories are to read—in fact, the content may be too much
for some kids—the innocence and hope of the young voices prevail
over the terror of war.

And Armstrong’s motives in putting together this collection
are as praiseworthy as the writing: “By exploring war through the
idiosyncrasies of story, character, and setting, you may begin to form
your own ideas about what war is, what it means, where it comes from,
and what happens when it happens.” She promotes no ulterior
agenda of pacifism, conceding that some wars are justified, even
necessary.

Also included, at the bottom of each page, are historic details
about the respective wars. Information on the Civilian Exclusion Order
and Japanese internment camps, for instance, accompany “Bad Day
for Baseball.” In some cases, these facts are bogged down with
statistics, but the numbers never overwhelm the stories.

Each tale undeniably supports the theory that war shatters the lives
of all people, even those not directly involved in the fighting. But
the entries also seem to suggest that sometimes the pieces can be put
back together, that hope can survive.

—Jennifer Pricola

NOTEWORTHY

LEVER BEATRICE: An Upper Peninsula Conte, by Margaret
Willey, with illustrations by Heather Solomon. (Atheneum, $16; grades
K-1.) In the late 1800s, many French Canadians were lured to the
woods of northern Michigan by the chance to make some money in the
burgeoning lumber industry. According to Willey, they were known around
camps for telling exaggerated tales known as contes. Clever
Beatrice, she writes in an author’s note, is an amalgam of
several popular contes about travelers who outsmart rich and
powerful giants. With her mother fallen on hard times, Beatrice, a
precocious child, sets out to wangle some gold from a giant who loves
to wager on his physical prowess. She makes several bets pitting her
strength against his and then tricks him each time into conceding
defeat. Kids will roll with laughter, but more at the giant’s
stupidity than Beatrice’s cleverness. (The story should have been
titled “The Dumb Giant.”) Solomon’s bright and
whimsical mixed-media illustrations add to the fun.

IT WASN’T ME!by Udo Weigelt, with illustrations by
Julia Gukova. (North-South, $15.95; grades K-3.) When Ferret
discovers that the raspberries he’s worked so hard to pick have
disappeared, he reports the theft to Mouse, who says, “I have a
pretty good idea who could have done it.” The two then set off to
find Raven, who, it turns out, has stolen before. (Raven was the guilty
party in an earlier Weigelt and Gukova collaboration, Who Stole the
Gold.) The bird denies any knowledge of the crime. “I
don’t steal anymore,” he insists. But Mouse soon finds a
fresh berry right under Raven’s perch. Ferret and Mouse call a
meeting of the other animals, who decide that circumstances and the
evidence point to Raven. Distraught, the bird decides to seek out
another forest, “where the animals are kind and trust me.”
As he’s preparing to leave, a new clue emerges that leads the
creatures to the real culprits. Weigelt, who is German, has written an
engaging, if somewhat didactic, story about the dangers of making snap
judgments, and Gukova, a Russian illustrator with a soft, appealing
touch, lends the tale warmth and humor.

WALK ACROSS THE SEA,by Susan Fletcher. (Atheneum, $16;
grades 5 and up.) It’s the late 1880s, and 13-year-old Eliza
Jane McCulley lives on a tiny island off the California coast in the
lighthouse her father operates. Twice daily, the water recedes,
exposing an isthmus to the mainland. Returning home on this path one
day, Eliza escapes being drowned by a “sneaker wave” thanks
to a warning from a Chinese boy named Wah Chung. Her father loathes the
Chinese who occupy shanties at the edge of town: They’re
“heathens” who steal jobs, he says. But the boy who saved
Eliza doesn’t fit this description, and after the Chinese are
forced out of town at gunpoint, she hides Wah Chung on her island. The
focus of this moving, thought-provoking book isn’t the Chinese
struggle to overcome bias in the 19th century; rather, it’s one
adolescent’s attempt to reconcile her feelings of compassion with
her father’s disapproval. And Fletcher makes clear that standing
by one’s convictions is noble, but it also has consequences.

FAIR WEATHER,by Richard Peck. (Dial, $16.99; grades 5 and
up.) With a grandiose opening—“It was the last day of
our old lives, and we didn’t even know it”—Peck
launches a heartwarming tale about the 1893 World’s Fair. Rosie
Beckett, a 13-year-old Midwestern farm girl, is shocked when her mother
lets her and her siblings accept their wealthy aunt’s invitation
to visit the fair in Chicago, where the “streets are filthy as a
hog wallow.” And despite their best intentions, city life does
not seem to become the Beckett children: In one day, they run off
Aunty’s help and humiliate her in front of the
“queen” of Chicago society. However, the wonders of the
fair—George Ferris’ wheel, Scott Joplin’s music,
Susan B. Anthony’s pro-suffrage speeches, and Buffalo
Bill’s antics—change how the Becketts look at the world.
Offering a budding romance, a zany granddad, and humorous clashes
between country and city life, Peck doesn’t skimp on plot. But
the fair, with all it promises for the future, is the real star
here.

TROUBLE DON’T LAST,by Shelley Pearsall. (Knopf,
$14.95; grades 5-8.) Samuel, a slave, has never traveled past the
corn rows of his master’s Kentucky plantation. But one night,
Harrison, the old man who’s raised Samuel since his momma was
sold, decides to head north and take the boy with him. Told through the
frightened eyes of an 11-year-old unable to grasp the notion of
“freedom,” the story depicts the underground railroad in
1859 as an erratic system of paths and safe houses. As strangers lead
him from boat to basement to church to house, without ever saying where
he’s going, Samuel begins to wonder whether Master
Hackler’s any worse than running and starving. As the title
suggests, the runaways eventually reach “Canaday” and
freedom, but their journey is fraught with suspenseful
moments—such as when they hide in a tree to escape hunting dogs.
Although Harrison claims that “nothin good comes outta putting
down words,” Pearsall’s heartbreaking, yet hopeful, story
provides a fine supplement to lessons on slavery.

CROSSING,by Philip Booth, with illustrations by Bagram
Ibatoulline. (Candlewick, $16.99; grades K-4.) Forget the
text—a spare, poetic reciting of the names, colors, and contents
of freight cars passing through a country rail crossing, circa
1940—this book is all about the pictures. Working in gouache,
Ibatoulline transforms an everyday event into a grand spectacle.
Indeed, there is a certain uncanny perfection to each glorious spread.
You can practically smell the steam engine, feel its heat, and hear the
steady rumble of wheels on rails and the clanging of crossing bells.
Most young kids love trains. While they might not appreciate
Ibatoulline’s striking, dead-on paintings of rusted metal that
adorn the book’s inside covers, they are sure to marvel at every
other passing page.

—Blake Hume Rodman and Jennifer Pricola

Vol. 13, Issue 5, Pages 40-42

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